So.cl - Microsoft's new social network!
via www.so.cl
Well, just when you think the world of social networks cannot get any more insane, along comes Microsoft with a new one. I really do need to have a 'WTF?' category on the blog. This is available at http://www.so.cl and they say of themselves: "So.cl is an experiment in open search. That means your searches on So.cl are viewable by other So.cl users and will also be available to third parties. So.cl does not automatically post your searches, comments, or likes to your Facebook stream unless you choose this option. Also, we don’t contact your Facebook friends unless you invite them."
The first thing... Read more...
Phil Bradley's weblog, May 21, 11:57am
Google Knowledge Graph
Google looks as though it's returning to its roots of search with the introduction of the Knowledge Graph. It's only just rolling out, and I haven't got it yet, so I'm using their video to introduce it:
What this means is that Google can understand the things in your search query, so we're slowly getting towards the concept of semantic searching. It's also widening out the opportunity to look more broadly (or indeed more narrowly) at a particular subject.
When you run a search, you'll get to see something like this: Read more...
Phil Bradley's weblog, May 16, 11:56pm
Google images get personal
Has anyone else seen that Google is now pushing the personalisation of images as well? I did a search today for the 'Big Society' and this is what I got: Read more...
Phil Bradley's weblog, May 15, 11:55pm
Online pharmaceutical companies
Well, not all of them, just one in particular. I spent a good few minutes clearing out spam from my blog which pointed to 'Health Websites' and I was rather irritated. So I thought I'd contact their customer live support number, to see what was occuring. This is the chat that I had...
11:37:19 Visitor: I have a query about cefdinir Read more...
Phil Bradley's weblog, May 15, 11:57am
Google+ Hangouts On Air: broadcast your conversation to the world | Official Google Blog
The Official Google Blog has details on a nice improvement to the hangout function that I've been talking about recently. You can now broadcast live onto your G+ profile page, your YouTube channel and to any page that you can embed HTML code into. You can see how many viewers you have, and the session will be recorded for you so that you can keep it and make available to other people.
This is a great idea - if you want to keep people on your site just embed the code and people can watch from the site or page that they're happy with going to - and if you are from an organisation like a school for example the site is giving the hangout authority at once. Moreover, if you're having a discussion about a book club for example, you can save the chat so that people who were unable to be there at the time can catch up later. It's also... Read more...
Phil Bradley's weblog, May 10, 11:57am
Google Custom Search improvements
via googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk
One of the things that I like about Google (and yes, there are a few, and I'm as happy to praise them as damn the other stuff they do wrong :) ) is the custom search engine. It's a great opportunity to create your own search engine - simply toddle along to the home page and fill in the blanks and you're done. Google has now informed us via the blog that they have... Read more...
Phil Bradley's weblog, May 10, 11:57am
Twicsy
The Twitter Pics Engine Apparently, there's about a million pictures uploaded onto Twitter every day. This is your fun filled Monday Bank Holiday fact, folks, so cherish it to your hearts. Twicsy is one of the ways of searching for them. Simply pop in your prefered search term, and see what it comes up with. It's a fairly random collection, as you might expect, and results often have little to do with the term you input, so it's not brilliant. You get results from the past hour, past day and so on. Please be aware that images which are NSFW do often turn up as well. Read more...
Phil Bradley's weblog, May 7, 11:57am
Google+ hangout experiment - results
Well, I tried hosting my first ever proper Google Hangout - that's to say, one which had a particular purpose, rather than just being around and chatting at random. I decided on the idea of telling a ghost story, and thinking about it, using the hangout is a new way of doing an old thing - gathering a bunch of friends together and swopping stories. It really *did* feel like the gentleman's smoking club that I imagine of old.
FIrst thing to remember though - don't, whatever you do, under any circumstances, ever ever ever make it public. Instead of the nice quiet smoking club you end up trying to tell a story to a few people in the middle of a nightclub. People pop in and then pop out again, and since you're limited to a total of 10 (including yourself) it's really a drive by existance, and not one which is condusive to indepth chat or for which you've got a purpose. It's particularly annoying when you get... Read more...
Phil Bradley's weblog, May 6, 11:57am
MillionShort search engine
OK, this falls into the 'WTF' category, but think about it for a moment. A search engine which *doesn't* return results from the top 1,000,000 websites. That's what MillionShort does. This is how it describes itself: "Million Short is an experimental web search engine (really, more of a discovery engine) that allows you to REMOVE the top million (or top 100k, 10k, 1k, 100) sites from the results set. We thought might be somewhat interesting to see what we'd find if we just removed an entire slice of the web. Read more...
Phil Bradley's weblog, May 5, 11:57am
Finding Google Hangouts
Following on from my previous post, you may be wondering how you can actually find hangouts to join. If you've been invited by a friend or colleague, or you're in a particular circle, you should get to see a notification that a hangout has been started. However, if you're not actually in G+ at the time (you mean that you're not in there all the time??) that's not very helpful. Even if you are keen, you might simply want to join a public hangout to see what's occuring. There are a few ways in which you can do this. The first is to visit a site called GPHangouts, as this will provide you with not only a list of hangouts that are taking place right now, but with hangouts that are scheduled for some time in the future. You can also use this site to publicise your own hangouts, if they are public.
Another option is to use a plug in for the Chrome browser. There are a few of... Read more...
Phil Bradley's weblog, May 4, 11:57am
I just want to read a book!
Look, it's not hard, surely to all that's wonderful. In this world of always on, hi-tech, Overdrive, Amazon, eBay, umpteen other bookshops online all I want to do is read. a. book. Well, admittedly, not just any book. If I wanted just any book I could manage that - that's not the issue. I particularly want to read 'Gods and Generals', which is the first in a triology of books about the American Civil War by Michael and Jeff Shaara.
Is it on Overdrive in Essex Libraries? No. Can I reserve it then, to pick up? No, because they only have the DVD, not the book. Right, strike one. OK, let's hit Amazon and get it on the Kindle then. Nope, it's not on the Kindle. "Tell the publisher you'd like to read this on the Kindle" What use is that to me? I want it NOW, not in twenty hundred and frosty weather! OK, they sell it. How much is it? £8.69. That's reasonable. Foyles have it for over £9, and Waterstones - just don't get me... Read more...
Phil Bradley's weblog, May 2, 11:56pm
Dealing with a threatening email
I had a slightly odd experience the other day - I got this email in relation to one of the articles on my website: "I'll take copyright of this text to myself. I'll fake publishing dates + I have more reputation. What are you going to do?"
Perhaps I'm doing the emailer a disservice and it's just a poorly written request for information, but given the other stuff that they wrote, I doubt that's actually the case. Anyway, it's an interesting question and one that's worth answering in a bit of detail.
The first thing to do, if you're writing content yourself, is to make it easy to check to see if someone else has actually taken your words. Include a couple of 'unusual' words or combination of words. It's then going to be really easy to simply run those through a search engine every few months to see if someone has actually tried to rip you off. A second line of defence is to use something like Read more...
Phil Bradley's weblog, May 2, 11:58am
Free flight comparison from Skyscanner
If you're in need of finding flights, it's worth taking a look at Skycanner. Reasonably quick, up to date and it works. It does tend to be slightly literal though - I asked for a flight from Southend to Belfast City, and it found me a couple, but they went via Amsterdam. However to be fair, it did just what I asked for, and once I looked around the screen there was a suggestion that I should go to Belfast International, both quicker and a lot cheaper.
I usually either look at a particular airport for flights or go to a specific carrier, but I will be trying this out when I'm travelling in the future.
Related articles
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Phil Bradley's weblog, Apr 30, 11:59am
Sound Effects & Clips | SoundCli.ps
via soundcli.ps
This is great fun. Do you need short and snappy sound effects for a podcast for example? Then try Soundclips. They have a wide variety of very short (10 seconds and less) sound files that you can download and they cover a huge range - science fiction photon blasts, dogs barking, offices, nightingale, waterfalls... this site will keep you occupied for hours as you 'just listen to one more'. Read more...
Phil Bradley's weblog, Apr 30, 11:59am
Forum Search Engine
Boardreader The tagline for this one is 'Connecting communities through search' but to be honest, the only communities that I can see it connecting are those of snails. A search for CILIP on Twitter brought back 4 results, months old, and when I did the same search in their boards/topics/forums section the results were similarly months old. Really can't recommend this one, so I'm just mentioning it so that you don't waste your time looking at it if you find it yourself. Read more...
Phil Bradley's weblog, Apr 30, 11:59am
Keotag
This search engine styles itself as a tag search multiple engines, tag generator and social bookmark links generator which basically means that it's a normal multi search engine. Type in your keyword, and then chose your engine, from a choice of 17, and it will pull back results for you, fading into the screen, in quite a calming manner. The majority of the engines are social media based, so we've got Technorati for blogs, Icerocket, Bloglines, Reddit, Delicious and so on. I was a bit concerned that some of the sites didn't return results when they quite clearly should have done, so I'm not sure if they've blocked Keotag, or Keotag simply hasn't got their act together.
Worth taking a look at if you get stuck and want to play around with a different engine for a while. Read more...
Phil Bradley's weblog, Apr 30, 11:59am
50 changes for Google Search in March
It's hard enough to keep up as it is, but there we are, that's Google for you. They say of themselves:
Here’s our latest installment of search quality highlights, with another 50 changes to report for March. We’re starting to get into a groove with these posts, so we’re getting more and more comprehensive as the months go by. New for this month, we’ve published uncut video from our search quality meeting, which gives a great flavor for how these decisions get made. Read more...
Phil Bradley's weblog, Apr 29, 11:56pm
The case of the mysterious 'even more' in Google
There is understandable annoyance from academics on Twitter over the last few days regarding the decline in importance of Google Scholar. You used to be able to find the resource by clicking the 'More' box, but as you can see, it's no longer there: Read more...
Phil Bradley's weblog, Apr 29, 11:56pm
LG's Flexible E-Paper Display Is Coming to Europe in April
via mashable.com
This is going to be a fun development in the ebook/ereader saga. The electronic paper display (EPD) is a 6-inch, 1024×768 e-ink plastic screen. It’s 0.7mm thick, it weighs 14g, and LG claims it’s resistant to scratches and drops from a 1.5 meter height. It can bend at a range of 40 degrees from the center of the screen, and it's also about one-third thinner and half as light as current glass EPDs, LG says, meaning it'll be even easier to carry than the e-book readers today.
There are going to be a whole host of uses for this - can anyone say 'Hogwarts newspaper'? Then there's delegate badges, signs that can be... Read more...
Phil Bradley's weblog, Apr 28, 11:54pm